Abstract
Integrating nature conservation effectively in forests managed for timber production implies reconciling a trade-off between ecological and economic objectives. In continuous cover forest management, this culminates in decisions about tree harvesting (or retention) determining both the prevalence of tree-related microhabitats in the forest and the economic viability of timber management. Applying an innovative mixed methods approach, we compare conservationists and foresters performing a tree selection exercise. We assess the outcomes of their forest management decisions quantitatively and explore their strategies and the underlying reasoning based on qualitative data. Our findings show that particularly the habitat trees differ greatly between the two groups: while conservationists retained almost exclusively large oaks at often high opportunity costs, foresters retained a notable number of smaller-diameter hornbeams. These differences are related to a different perception of opportunity costs of retention by both groups, as well as because they do not agree about how to value current tree-related microhabitats and their projection into the future. Such diverging patterns of reasoning imply incompatible interpretations of what constitutes a habitat tree. Our results indicate that it is important to apply benchmarks for evaluating ecological goals as well as to increase foresters’ and conservationists’ understanding about the motivations and restrictions of the respective counterpart. Our study points out a significant potential for (mutual) learning, and illustrates the complementarity of quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine tree selection behaviour.
Highlights
Integrating biodiversity conservation measures in forests managed for commodity production is crucial to reach biodiversity conservation goals (Gustafsson et al 2012)
In forests managed for timber production, which typically lack structural elements relating to old-growth phases and considerable amounts of deadwood, this requires a significant and well distributed presence of so-called old growth characteristic (Bauhus et al 2009), including tree-related microhabitats (TreMs; i.e. tree cavities, bark pockets, dead branches or trunk rot; see Larrieu et al 2018)
The most striking result of the conducted exercise was the remarkably different selection strategies concerning habitat trees; we focus on this aspect in the discussion
Summary
Integrating biodiversity conservation measures in forests managed for commodity production is crucial to reach biodiversity conservation goals (Gustafsson et al 2012). The timber value of such trees (e.g. oak trees) can still be considerable, though, and excluding them from the economic value chain through retention can imply a noticeable economic loss (Niedermann-Meier et al 2010; Santopuoli et al 2019). They might occupy growing space over several rotations ages, with increasing safety risks and cost implications for nearby forestry operations. Selecting and retaining potential habitat trees in forest management in the context of continuous cover forestry impacts both economic viability of wood production and the conservation value of the remaining forest stand (Santopuoli et al 2019)
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